Related art belt-roll fusers include a hard internal pressure roll and a soft external pressure roll. The internal pressure roll, or fuser roll, and the external pressure roll, or pressure roll, together form a fusing nip for fusing marking material such as toner to a sheet, after the sheet has received toner from a transfer station. A fuser belt may be entrained by the internal roll and three outer heated rolls, the fuser belt extending through the nip.
During a printing process, a paper sheet that is fused at the nip may stick to the fusing belt after passing through the nip. Typically, a strip shoe is implemented to strip the sheet from the fusing belt. The strip may have, for example, a less than 5 mm stripping radius. The fusing belt wraps around the strip shoe causing a bend in the belt at which paper leaves the belt surface during processing. Related art fusing nips cause image quality defects such as “retacking”, gloss defects such as “icicles”.